Bright Lights of Broadway

Bright Lights of Broadway (1923) is a fairly standard tale of the country girl (Doris Kenyon) who dreams of city lights. A chance meeting with a Broadway producer (Lowell Sherman) lures her away from her boring boyfriend and minister-to-be (Harrison Ford). and off she goes. Sherman chucks aside his present squeeze (Claire de Lorez) and squires Kenyon, who is dazzled by the sights and sounds of the Great White Way. Eventually he makes good his promise and she gets her names in lights, only to soon tire of the hurly burly, not to mention his advances. Ford finally comes to the rescue and confronts the couple in Sherman's Park Avenue apartment. In a tussle for the gun (what a surprise) Ford accidentally it fires and lo and behold de Lorez is lurking behind a curtain and falls down dead. Ford is convicted with the help of Sherman's lies and is scheduled to be electrocuted. Kenyon then forces Sherman to write and sign a confession (but he may not have killed the woman) and off she races to stop the execution.

This is where the film takes a jump in excitement. As Kenyon races to the prison with the note (she never thinks to call anyone on a phone) Sherman follows. After she smashes her car she jumps on a train engine and off they go. Sherman also jumps a train and bribes the engineers to follow. The high-speed race to the prison is well done though not terribly believable. There's a spectacular train wreck and a happy ending.

We don't see much of Kenyon as a stage star but we do see Flo Ziegfeld's name all over the place, including a nightclub scene where Charlie Murray does a lame act and the "Tiller Girls" do a few dances. The Tiller Girls were a small group of chorus girls choreographed by John Tiller and licensed for use by Ziegfeld.